Here Alone
by the-coconut-bubble
Summary: Ten years have passed since he went away. A thousand more will probably pass before I can get him out of my head. oneshot


**(A/N: Inspired by the song "Where'd You Go", by Fort Minor. Go listen.) **

Disclaimer: I do not own Card Captor Sakura. I own whatever their personalities are in this story and any character that I make up.

Here Alone

I wipe the cold fog off the window, and look out of it. I look out past the low gray walls surrounding the house, look out to the sparkling city beyond. I think about how I long to go there. To be there, where the noise and bustle and hustle would take my mind off of myself. Off of me, and everything that's been around me for the last ten years of my life. The city, that sanctuary forever out of my reach. And it's not just that I lack the means to get there. No. It's not just the five miles of countryside. It's also the ten thousand memories.

The empty, rain-washed courtyard reminds me of happier times. When we had played together, and talked together, been best friends. And he had kissed me there, right in the shade of that big willow tree, underneath the moon that had seemed so bright after that night. So we were lovers, too.

But "we"? There is no more "we". He's gone.

I woke up one day to an empty bed and cold sheets. There was no comforting warmth and steady breathing beside me, no arms holding me close. No. Just the coldness. The white walls of the room surrounded me, the sunlight reflecting blankly off of them, its warmth all gone.

My heart had thumped emptily, my eyes widening in bewilderment, trying to see something that wasn't there.

The deceptive sunshine was shining lovingly in through the window, lighting up the glass figurine of the beautiful dancing angel at the foot of the bed. He'd given it to me last year for my birthday. It, too, shone cheerfully, reflecting in a twisted way the confusion roiling inside of me.

And even before I got out of the bed to wander the halls calling his name, I knew he was not going to come back. Cold stone floors greeted my colder feet, and my voice echoed vainly, bouncing off the high arched ceilings. A lonely call.

I tripped on my way down the stairs, the hollow feeling inside blurring my vision worse than tears ever could. The porch door was open, and I stumbled out, the light momentarily blinding me. Everything looked the same as it did yesterday, but to me, it had all changed in some small indescribable way. Our flowers were wilting, the once-blooming rosebushes now a tangle of thorns. The small trees that guarded the corners looked even smaller, their trunks leaning against the dull wood of the fence.

And the tall willow tree, which had always stood proudly in the centre of the garden and looked out over the world, had a strange, sad air about it this morning. Its branches seemed to hang lower than usual, its leaves grazing grass that was still wet from the morning's dew.

It was all so beautiful; the sweet normalcy of life seeming to fill the world. And I had never felt so empty, standing there, a lone figure tilting on the edge of the end of this world, the chasm inside of me every bit as large as the one I was about to fall into. But I shed no tears. The chasm had swallowed them up.

Standing there, I got my first taste of what true loneliness was. And from then on, nothing has been, or could ever be the same.

Ten years have passed since that morning. A thousand more will probably pass before I can get him out of my head.

My hair used to be shiny, and thick, and healthy. Now it's wispy, and mousy, and gray. My eyes, too, have been reduced to dull orbs, sunken into my face, starkly huge against my sallow face. Dead.

He left me to wander down the cold halls of the prison I used to call home. He left me sitting by myself beside the window every day, my empty stare guarding the path that leads to the house. He left me hanging here by myself, and with every passing day that I have to stay here and hope and wish against my own reasoning that he will come back, every day, the knives in the kitchen beckon to me more. He left me so alone.

So now I know. If he ever comes back, he won't find me here. If he ever comes back, I'll be gone. Long gone. Then _he _can be the one to wander the halls, _he _can be the one who feels that burning ache, day after day after day, _he_ can be the one to realize the slow monotony of living…he can be the one to realize that he was wrong.

Today is the tenth year of his going. Ten since he walked down the rose-lined path, walked away from me and away from us.

The very air seems to press in on me today. It hurts. Every movement I make hurts. It hurts to breathe, to live.

People lie. They say that all things heal with time. And for many things it's true. The sting of a needle, the irregularity of change, the scars on the earth. But this? This is perhaps the one thing that time cannot touch. Ten years ago, my pain was strong. Now it's been magnified ten times. Or several hundred; I've lost count. Either way, it's so far past just "strong" now. Strong I can handle. Overwhelming I cannot.

Now there's only one way out.

As I walk to the kitchen, I hear a distant footstep. Perhaps the sign that my mind has finally pushed itself over the edge. Perhaps a memory of tomorrow. But it's not now, not in _my _time anymore.

I stand at the threshold of the kitchen door, and the shining metal beckons to me. As if in a dream, I cross the kitchen on legs that have long lost their feeling, and my hand floats out to grasp the longest, sharpest blade. It slides out of the block smoothly, not a day's worth of dust having gathered on its mahogany handle. I don't pause to study my reflection in the blade, only to determine which is the fastest way to end it.

As my hand, grasping the knife, drifts up to touch my chest, I see movement out of the corner of my eye. It doesn't matter. It's too late now. Let the ghouls of my past try to haunt me. They can't hurt me anymore.

I pull the knife slightly away, ready once and for all to drive it through my heart, ready to hear the resounding of my life in my head, on the floor.

But suddenly, a hand appears. In the heat of the moment, with all of my senses sharpened more than they've ever been before, I find I have time to study this hand. It is a large hand, both rough and smooth at the same time. A hand that has seen the world, one that has fought many, many battles. It resembles…but I don't think of him.

As I gather my thoughts, I realize that the hand has taken the blade out of my hand, and set it gently on the countertop. I try to protest, can't. My throat has constricted after ten years of unuse. But suddenly, I don't want to protest. The stranger hand is warm around my hand. So warm. Warmer than I've been in the last ten years. And so are the arms that are wrapping around me. Warm.

It takes a second longer to click. Nobody could make me feel so warm; nobody could even touch my heart after so many years of coldness. Nobody but him.

Now he's turning me around, _with those hands_, I can't help thinking, and I can't help but to look up into his eyes.

They're still the same eyes that I remember, those amber eyes that were so loving, so caring when they gazed into mine. But his face…it's so different. Older, lined, gray with exhaustion. And more streaks of gray in his once glorious brown locks. Without thinking I reach up, run my fingers through his hair.

The ice breaks. His arms close around me, hold me closer, closer. I missed this for so long that I don't know what to do. I stand stiffly, as if waiting. But then I feel his hands running up and down my back, soothing, so soothing. My arm is crushed between us, but I don't care. I lean into him, and my head finds that curve in his shoulder that I know so well. And as my arms move of their own accord to hold him too, all my thoughts of emptiness, of loneliness, die away.

He had come back. In time to save me. My tears drip gently onto the thin fabric of his shirt. I feel his lips on my hair, loving. Feel his fingers on my cheek as they brush away my tears. Loving.

His lips move down to my temple, to my eyelid, to my cheek, and finally down to my own lips. Gently at first, then, as all the years of longing and uncertainty crashed down upon us, he pressed harder, but his lips remained soft, and his arms hold me impossibly closer. I leaned into him, and felt as I did the first time he kissed me.

Through the turmoil of my mind, I realized something. Something so inexplicably small, but so undeniably huge, all at once. That knowledge that had been at the back of my mind, that in my subconscious had stopped me from doing the inevitable until now. Without that, without my unknowingly undying faith, I would have gone long ago.

I thought I had been waiting for him to come back.

But he had never left.


End file.
